Reply #24: Either the law gets followed or they have to change the law

[gratuitous]

It's still black letter law that you can't foreclose on a property you don't own. And if you don't have clear title to a property, you don't own it. The real estate market was so overheated during the Bush years, the big money boyz couldn't process the paperwork fast enough. Real estate was too valuable and the money to be made from commissions and fees and on and on was just too good to let it go. Packaging and repackaging bundles of mortgages was the hot commodity, and they paperwork couldn't move quickly enough. Some day, when the heat finally got turned down a little, they'd go back and catch it all up.

Now we see the problems as the music has stopped and everyone's scrambling for a chair. Some of the shadier operators aren't around anymore. And surprise! They weren't all that meticulous about keeping track of all the little pieces of paper. Lost, stolen, shredded, never existed, stored away someplace and nobody knows where, but for mortgages that went through several exchanges, the odds of a snafu increase with each new transaction.

That leaves changing the law as the only way out for these lenders to recover properties they can't prove they own. At least they can't prove it in the traditional sense with all those "deeds" and "signed documents" heretofore favored by courts of law. You think the Chamber of Commerce is pouring billions into this election because they really hate Obamacare? Fuhgeddaboudit! They need a malleable new Congress that will re-write the property laws in this country so that they can foreclose on properties on little more than their own say-so. They came within an ace of it a short time ago with that self-writing bit of legislative legerdemain that the president vetoed.

What do you suppose their tack is going to be? "How come you can tell the truth in one state, but you have to prove it all over again in another state? Call Congress and tell them to change the law and quit being so nit-picky about notarized documents! Americans need stability and security!" And what isn't said: So that lying, thieving financial institutions can take possession of "foreclosed" property without all the hassle of proving they own it.